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New to magic (Lorica)
Beginnings The road to becoming a mage isn't clear cut, especially since it's rather a socially kept secret (anyone who is a mage keeps it secret). Generally, magic may be sorted according to the phase of matter it's cast within. There are five primary ones (gas, liquid, solid, plasma, and vacuum). There is practically no magic that can be cast in a vacuum or in plasma since they are extremes of nothingness and temperature, respectively. There are also other phases that involve combinations of the first three primary ones, such as emulsions, vapors, gels, etc. Within the body it's even more complicated. But generally, all magi would agree that magic cast in the liquid phase is the easiest to master, primarily because the spell easily travels throughout the liquid medium. Starting magic requires some close observance of the environment. Are there any things that are happening that shouldn't or behaving in unusual ways? In Chronicle, young Qura stumbles across a pulsphere, which emitted an intensely brilliant light. [[Developa magia (Lorica)|'Awakened']] clay may on occasion do something - change shape, for example, when as an inorganic material it should never do anything. Birds that have formed a symbiotic relationship with awakened matter may be able to perform feats that ordinary birds aren't able to do, such as flying vertically without stalling. Awakened water may change color, or alternatively they may spontaneously eject a water droplet upward (like the opposite of a droplet falling into a pool). There are many, many possibilities, each corresponding to a faera life form (star-based (magical) life forms, as opposed to flora and fauna, which are carbon-based life forms). That said, the fact that faera are star-based means that you rarely get to see their magic in action. However, sighting something that non-magic science can't explain is often a key step on the road to becoming a mage. Once you find the whatever it is that is so unusual and collect it, you'll be able to study it more effectively and come to appreciate just how different it is. Placing the awakened object in contact with normal (sleeping) object causes the latter to awaken as well. In this way you would be able to experiment with this ordinarily uncommon find. After setting out on a quest to find other faera, you will begin collecting specimens, oftentimes in glass bottles for safekeeping. You'll get around to combining them to see what results. And along your journeys you - a journeyman or journeywoman - will come across a variety of distinct specimens and record your observations in a diary (your book of shadows, or grimoire). And sooner or later you'll come across the most important four discoveries - the rock-faera called Nethicite, Genicite, Ossilocite, and Numeracite. Your first spell will likely be very, very basic. It will be immersed in a liquid, such as water - in other words, it will be cast like a potion. For example, the first spell Qura makes is a light potion, involving adding the spell operant (a functional group which generates light) to a vial of water. Then particles of Nethicite, the mist-rock, are added to the solution, instantly causing it to burst in brilliance. Then, since there's nothing to stop the reaction and because the laws of physics are apparently different when it comes to magic, the reaction goes on and the potion acts much like a light bulb with an endless battery. Here the Nethicite acts as the spell trigger, the very first item to be added to a spell to get the reaction going. The instant the Nethicite is added the potion begins to glow. The brilliance of the light potion may be adjusted by reducing either ingredient. So for example, if you start with a 1:1 mix of the two, reducing the concentration of either Nethicite or the operant by half will reduce the brightness by half, but reducing both ingredients by half will still only reduce the brightness by half. A solution with a concentrated amount of operant will easily be bright enough to blind any and all onlookers (with or without sunglasses). A diluted light potion will be proportionately less brilliant and hence far more effective as a light source (since people occasionally look at light sources). Alternatively your first operant component could generate heat, remove heat, etc. From your first reaction you would discover how much Nethicite to mix with how much of the spell operant, and from that you'd figure out their molar masses (somewhat of a misnomer since stars don't have mass). This is made easier by the fact that Nethicite is always of a uniform star-to-atom ratio. From there you would surmise that the Nethicite is another spell operant, but it is one that binds to your spell operant's allosteric site. This binding is what then causes your spell operant to trigger. So in the example above, the Nethicite binds to the light-creating spell operant's allosteric site, and hence its operant component activates, generating the light. As long as this particular functional group of Nethicite remains attached to the spell operant, the pair continues to give off light. The next step is to create your own spell core. The objective is to make a spell that's not just a single-combination reaction, which is very limited in versatility. Let's say you wanted to create a spell which does all of one thing but only after it does all of something else, ie. it does A and then B, as opposed to a two-component potion which does A and B simultaneously. Oftentimes a beginning mage won't even notice the difference between the two, but with certain situations you'll notice. Generally, the parallel track is either-or, so as long as the spell core is active, one of multiple events will occur, but not the others. Meanwhile, the series track is strict AND, giving you everything you'd expect and in order. Products stick to the operant group until it has reached its end, at which point it is released (see diagram). For example, if A were create-oxygen and B were create-hydrogen, you'd get every bit of air you were expecting if you have the spell perform in parallel, but if you have it perform in series, you'll get water. Here's where the other two rock-faera come in. Genecite takes any given functional group and creates a counterpart to it. A counterpart to a light spell's functional group, for example, can recognize and bind to it. However, the Genecite requires some raw material to work with. If you were to combine material with a create-light functional group with a similar sleeping material, said functional group will just propagate into the other material and you'll just end up with more of the awakened material and more of the functional group. In the end the functional group to residence ratio (how much of functional group there is per amount of matter) will be the same as before. This is possible because all matter has stars in one form or another; they're just very often in a disorderly (useless) state. So when functional groups encounter sleeping material it's like bacteria stumbling upon a brand new agarose plate - plenty of food in sight translating into a flurry of replication. So instead the sleeping material is added to Genecite, which binds to said material. Then when the mixture is added to the create-light functional group, the Genecite reassembles the discordant stars in the sleeping material so that they bind with the create-light functional group. If at this point the functional group is already bonded with Nethicite (in which case it's already giving off light), the Nethicite has already bonded with the allosteric site (beginning side) so the Genecite bonds with the spell operant's bond (see diagram), attaching a checkpoint functional group to its end side. If there's no Nethicite bonded, the Genecite adds checkpoints to both the beginning and end sides. If this is your first functional group the beginning-side checkpoint is effectively your spell core's reactive operator (see diagram). At this point you have the create-light functional group bonded to Genecite which is bonded to a checkpoint that fits the functional group. Now you have to remove the Genecite, which is done by adding at least as much Ossilocite as you have added Genecite. The Ossilocite binds with the Genecite and the two precipitate out of the solution. Ossilocite can bind to other bonded Ossilocite, which results in a chain reaction that precipitates the extra Ossilocite. This process leaves you with just the create-light functional group and the checkpoint, which then bonds tightly with it. At this point you may add additional operants, effectively stringing them together with the aid of the already bonded checkpoints. With good calculations and use of aliquots you will be able to get the right ratios so that the vast majority of spell cores have the secondary operants and there is only a negligible amount of free (unbonded) secondary operants. The logical step a mage would take would be to see if it were possible to have the spell remember certain things. The most basic unit of spell memory is the variable, which, much like in computer programming, can store some kind of information because it can change and its current status tells you something about the current situation. In order to get started you'd first need either a signal receptor functional group or a marker. Once you have either, you can propagate it to get more, and use Genecite followed by Ossilocite to get its counterpart. For example, if you use it on a signal receptor you'll get the marker it recognizes (see diagram), and vice versa. Using Numeracite with sleeping material and Ossilocite in various ways, you'll end up with particular value functional groups, which can be seen as corresponding to a particular number. These will effectively the default, or starting, values for whatever variables whose markers you choose to bind them to (see diagram). Much like with the operants, you can use the Genecite preparation to string together signal receptors via the use of checkpoints. There are other functional groups which effectively act as AND, OR, NOT, FOR, WHILE, and etcetera, which you'll need for this task. Depending on the way you use the Ossilocite, you'll either get them strung together in series or in parallel, which is even more important than for the operant group because it gives you great flexibility in setting the required conditions. When all is said and done you can attach an anchor to the spell. This anchor takes precedence over the native anchor, which basically tells the spell core to stay in its medium but drift wherever the medium takes it. So for projectile spells, such as creating a gust of wind, this will be useful in getting the spell - and all the spell cores that comprise it - moving. As the variables generally are attracted to the spell cores, they will come along for the ride and won't get lost. There are many other possibilities for spell design and development in Lorica's magical system. With sufficient experience with magic, magi can fight arcane battles (by attempting to destroy the other person's spells), treat wounds (by having magic go into a person's body, analyze it for problems, and create fixes for those problems), and keep track of the entire world (by having a worldspell pervade the atmosphere and garner all the knowledge it receives into a condensed form). In fact, the worldspell Loricae is, by itself, so complicated that it takes a long while to explain it in its entirety, and many medical spells would require a Ph.D. to explain. Category:Magic